This is not how housing should work...

[worldofneil]

I have a med. house- the timer will be up in 3 days (of the 30 given).

Hi,

Housing demolition takes place after 45 days, not 30.

At this point I am told I get 80% of my money back

Yes, 80% of what you paid for the plot, but you need to go and pick it up from the resident caretaker and you only have 35 days to do so. It also doesn't include the cost of the permit for the estate hall (1 million for a medium if you bought it directly from the system) so you may wish to remove the estate hall first to get the permit back for possible future reuse. As long as you don't relinquish the plot itself it'll still demolish on time.

If I choose to demo my own house I should get the cost of it back asap

The 80% of the money is supposed to be compensation for having lost your plot and it wasn't intended for people to intentionally wait out the timer to get money back. Housing is still supposed to be a gil sink hence they only give us 35 days to collect money/items from the caretaker.

Also due to changes in rules and updates there is a lot of misinformation on these forums

Although demolition has been turned on/off a few times, the rules behind it have actually stayed the same since it was introduced in October 2015:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...3e7ccabefa9954